By Narnia K and Keisha A, Year 12

Professor Lara Frumkin, a chartered psychologist, came in to talk to English Language and Psychology students about accent bias and the preconceived notions people have. Professor Frumkin’s key areas of research include accent, race and other seemingly irrelevant (extralegal) factors that impact case outcome and perceptions of witnesses. She explained that speakers are perceived differently because of their accents. Professor Frumkin highlighted an extremely interesting point of how we favour some accents over others. For example most speakers prefer an accent that is the same as their own, or how younger speakers are perceived more positively than older speakers. As well as this we also looked at accent bias from a court setting. Looking at a case where a witness’s statement was disregarded due to accent bias and stereotype. A study showed that white accents are often favoured over black and we then discussed how we should aim to break this bias toward accent.

Professor Frumkin provided an engaging talk discussing how we can easily fall susceptible to accent biases, and create perceptions of people purely based on how they speak. To showcase this accent bias we listened to several different audio clips of speakers and then were asked what we might have assumed about them based on their accent. During the talk we also realised how unaware we are of our surroundings and often pay less attention to detail unless our focus is shifted. To give us a first-hand understanding of this, she showed us an image of a clock early on in the talk, and asked us to draw it ourselves later. We found that although we paid attention to detail as we were directed to, most of us drew the number 4 on the clock in the Roman numeral form we expected ‘IV’ instead of the French way that it was actually written on the clock ‘IIII’. This showed us how our expectations and preconceived ideas influence our actions later on. Professor Frumkin used this as a teaching point to explain the importance of taking in every single detail rather than making assumptions based on stereotypes or ‘the norm’.